


NDstuck

by fennnnario



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Chronic Pain, Depression, Gen, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 04:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4207890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fennnnario/pseuds/fennnnario
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>various explorations of mental illness and neurodiversity through homestuck characters</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. did you ever wonder how you got to here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (it’s not a matter of time, it’s just a matter of timing)  
> humanstuck Aradia attends college and finds time slipping away from her as she becomes numb and listless. basically a personal exploration of depression through my bb.

the night of november 23rd is when you finally turn your alarm off.  
you’d set it months ago, right after getting your schedule. 8:30 AM. an hour before your eng101 class on MWF, thirty minutes before your archeology class T/TH.  
it took a month before you were snoozing the alarm on mondays, then another week before you did the same on wednesdays and fridays. you usually made it to class on time, unshowered and wearing yesterday’s clothes.  
tuesdays were next, because you worked at the library monday evening, and you were tired, you told yourself. thursday held out the longest, but by the end of october, you were barely able to drag yourself out of bed and make it to class 5 minutes late.  
and now here you are. for all of november you’ve been slipping, losing minutes. it takes you longer to get to class because you walk slowly, taking time to remember the turns, crawling up hills. you wonder if gravity has gotten stronger since you enrolled. everything feels harder, heavier.  
your archeology professor forgot your name. you’d introduced yourself to her on the first day, bubbling with excitement. she told you to call her by her first name. damara. you remember feeling like she would teach you the secrets of the world.  
now you stumble in to class halfway through and stare at the wall. her voice drones on. your mind is blank. this subject is stupid. who cares about dead things.  
the day of november 23rd, you snooze your alarm five times. you finally wake up right as class is supposed to begin. it takes you 26 minutes to get out of bed and go to the bathroom. when you get back, you’re already tired again. you look at the piles of clothes on your floor, trying to put together an outfit. you haven’t done laundry since the first time, when your RA came by to show all the freshmen where the laundry rooms were.  
you reach out to grab a pair of black jeans. your arm feels weak and limp. you halfheartedly pick up a few shirts and examine them.  
then you find yourself crying. you’re not sure why. you sink to the floor, still holding the shirts, crying with your eyes open. staring at the wall. wondering what happened. the bright eyed girl who was full of excitement, her head empty and waiting for knowledge, seems so far out of reach. now your head is empty and throbbing and will never be full again.  
you spend the next hour and a half on the floor, thinking nothing or almost nothing. you manage to crawl back in bed and nap on and off for another three hours. when you give up on sleeping any more, you turn on the tv and watch it with half of your mind spilling out. you spend the rest of the day like that. you don’t eat anything.  
that night, you turn your alarm off.


	2. between the pain and the pills trying to hold it at bay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after the accident, Tavros is left with chronic pain in his legs. He tries his best to deal with it and accept it as part of his life now.

for the first two days he couldn’t feel anything. it was disorienting as hell but it wasn’t bad, exactly. it helped that gamzee was feeding him sopor every few hours. his head was swimming. his legs were covered by a blanket, just indistinct lumps. they didn’t feel connected to him at all. tinkerbull landed on one and he couldn’t feel anything, not even the weight. as far as he was concerned, his body ended at the base of his spine. and it was definitely weird, it was different, but he was coping.  
and then he woke up on the third day, and the pain started. it was just a little tingling in his feet at first. he was excited, he shouted out for aradia who was napping in the next room. maybe his feeling would come back! she ran in and shared his excitement. they tested but he still couldn’t feel any touch. and the tingle was starting to hurt.  
as the day progressed, it got worse. the tingle turned to a burning feeling, like when he came into his hive after his fingers got numb on a cold day. little jolts of worse pain would shoot through, like electricity dancing across his flesh. and he still couldn’t move his legs at all. the only thing he could feel was pain.  
he tolerated it all day, and then the next, hoping it would end soon. or at least change. but it remained the same. burning fires in the void where his legs used to be. he got gamzee to come back over and feed him almost the entirety of a sopor pie- and he drifted off to sleep, gamzee’s messy hair and enormous horns blurring and then turning into a dreamless sleep.  
when he woke up the burning was still there. worse than the day before. or maybe the same. it didn’t matter. he hated it. he slapped tinkerbull out of the air. he growled at terezi when she made a joke. she looked shocked. he never got angry at anyone. he just had no patience. after she left, he cried and cried. he cried because he hurt his friend, he cried because his stupid legs were messed up, and he cried because of the pain. his tears dried up and then he was just moaning, mouth open, eyes scrunched up. he knew he must look pathetic but he didn’t care. he was screaming agony and fear and hate into the void.  
he stopped because nothing changed. he flopped a hand over his face and sighed. the burning stayed. was this his life now? what was the use? it would have been better if he’d landed on his head, if he was just going to be pathetic and angry and suffering from now on.  
but he wasn’t, of course. he got used to it somehow. he could shove his tears down, remain composed while talking to someone. sometimes even enjoy himself for a moment while watching a movie or chatting. only a moment though. it was impossible to focus for long. it was like the pain drained his mental resources, making it so he was dumber, slower, more easily distracted. that didn’t go away even as he got more used to the pain and the lack of sensation below his waist.  
when he got his wheelchair, a whole new world of pain was opened to him. sitting upright for too long made the burning worse, but it was a pain to lift his heavy useless legs up onto a footrest. and if he went over a bump it would shake everything, a jolt of pain would go through him, and then little electric shocks would follow for the next few minutes. he never said anything aloud though. he felt bad enough asking his friends to push him around. he was such a burden already, complaining about hurting would be too much.  
after he got out of the chair his legs would be sore from the pressure. or at least that’s what he assumed. they ached as well as burned, like he’d been walking for hours, even though he’d just been sitting up. but it was worth it to be able to move around.  
eventually he got used to those feelings too. somewhat. as much as was possible. he didn’t talk about it, he acted normal, he knew everyone was long past being sympathetic about his injuries. he enjoyed playing games with friends or alone.  
at night though, when he was trying to sleep, he had nothing to distract him and the pain took over. it took hours to fall asleep, staring at the wall. the sopor was cold on his chest, but of course, felt like nothing below. it just reminded him of his messed up body. it used to be that aches and pains were soothed by the cool slime against his skin. but this pain was weird and horrible like a curse, and the sopor didn’t change that one bit.  
this was his life now. he tried to be accepting. he was accepting. but not all the time, not every day. it was too much.

when kanaya came at him with the chainsaw, he was scared, but he trusted her. he didn’t feel it when she sliced his legs off. but he cried when they were fully severed because finally he just felt nothing. finally this pain he’d felt for years was gone. it was like an enormous weight was lifted from him. his friends stood around in shock and horror, and he lay on the ground, happier than he’d ever been before.


End file.
